Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Social & External
The people behind it
Miyuki Kuwano
Reiko Harada
Fumio Watanabe
Haruaki Nozawa
Masahiko Tsugawa
Ôta
Hiroshi Akutagawa
Prof. Udagawa
Kei Satō
Sakamaki
Rokkō Toura
Higashiura Toura
Akiko Koyama
Misako Nakagawa
Shinko Ujiie
Mrs. Udagawa
Ichirô Hayami
Takumi
Takao Yoshizawa
Katsuhiko Nakayama
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.
The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.
Two different students—a successful but aloof academic and a rebellious but kindhearted delinquent—form a friendship through their love of jazz music.
Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.
This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle of the wealthy Makioka family from Osaka, and draws a parallel between their activities and the seasonal variations in Japan.
Young Guy (Kayama) competes in an electric guitar competition and plays American-style football.
Amagi Goe, based on Seicho Matsumoto's novel, has created numerous stars through its visualizations. Erika Ikuta will take on the difficult role of the main character in this adaptation.
A former Buddhist monk turned erotic filmmaker, Subuyan lives with hairdresser Haru and her two teenage children. Shooting two skin flicks per day, he somehow manages to stay out of the clutches of the yakuza, but real trouble starts when Haru discovers him lusting after her daughter.
Kiroku boards with a Roman Catholic family and falls for the daughter Michiko. He ignores his feelings, joins a gang, gets in fights and, eventually, becomes involved with the radical Kita Ikki group.
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
Seigo Yoshioka (Kenji Sakaguchi) is a teacher that became mute after a kendo accident. He feels lost after the accident and eventually decides to teach again on a small island where his mother was born. The children there on the island quickly name him "Kikansha Sensei" (Teacher Locomotive) after learning he is mute. The parents on the island are mostly hostile to Seigo Yoshioka, believing he is incapable of teaching their children. But with Seigo Yoshioka's determination and kindness, a strong bond develops between the students and the mute teacher, which then changes the parents' opinions of Seigo Yoshioka. Suddenly, tragedy then strikes ...
The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.
Widower Shuhei Hirayama's caretaker is his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko. Gradually, he comes to realize that Michiko should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.
A year has passed in postwar Tokyo, and struggling writer Chagawa enters the Akutagawa Prize competition in hopes of securing a better future for the boy in his care, while the Suzuki family unexpectedly take in a new relative who looks down on their humble way of life.
Young women in a small Japanese town look to revive their home's declining fortunes by building a Hawaiian village tourist attraction.
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portrays the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.
When Keiji Takama returns to Nagasaki, he finds many changes. The rights of the entertainment field that had been held by his family have been taken over by the Matsui Group, a new gangster setup. So he becomes head of the Takama Group to regain lost territory. With the cooperation of all the Bosses from Tokyo to Nagasaki, who had known his father, Keiji recovers the rights to put on shows at the City Hall. As he had feared, however, Matsui begins to interfere with his plans. Keiji's men are furious, but he knows better than to take up the cudgels with Matsui at this important time. Whatever Matsui does, Keiji goes one better. Frustrated and bitter, Matsui calls in the help of Koiwa, a killer. Now, having tried his best to oust Keiji but finding that he is made of sterner stuff than he had counted on, he decides to have Koiwa do away with him for good.
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
A Japanese intelligence officer faces personal crises in the years preceding the Manchurian conflict.
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
Yokohama, 1963. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics—and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. Against this backdrop of hope and change, a friendship begins to blossom between high school students Umi and Shun—but a buried secret from their past emerges to cast a shadow on the future and pull them apart.
Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
Kaji, sent to the Japanese army labeled Red, witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against a fellow recruit. He also sees his friend Shinjô defecting to the Russian border, and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.
In the shady black markets and bombed-out hovels of post–World War II Tokyo, a tough band of prostitutes eke out a dog-eat-dog existence, maintaining tenuous friendships and a semblance of order in a world of chaos. But when a renegade ex-soldier stumbles into their midst, lusts and loyalties clash, with tragic results. With Gate of Flesh, visionary director Seijun Suzuki delivers a whirlwind of social critique and pulp drama, shot through with brilliant colors and raw emotions.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
An experimental, psychedelic odyssey through Japanese subculture experienced via the eyes of a disillusioned young man, who must contend with intense familial dysfunction, psychosexual alienation, and existentialist malaise.
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.
Soon after being named the new leader of his high school's gang system, Kujo grows bored with the violence and hatred that surround him. He wants desperately to abandon his post… but his once-enviable position of power has a strange way of making him feel powerless.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
Ocho is accidentally captured by a drug trafficking cartel who use Chinese women to smuggle drugs into Japan by hiding it in their vaginas. She is tortured, and manages to escape, fighting both the male yakuzas and a gang of female thieves.
During World War II in North Africa, a group of British commandos disguised as Italian soldiers must travel behind enemy lines and destroy a vital Nazi oil depot.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Andrew Crocker-Harris is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British prep school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire for 'health reasons', and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His unfaithful wife Laura tries to hurt him in any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and at least regain his own self-esteem.
Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.
Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and the notion of liberty in modern Japanese society.
In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.